Dark Places — Part 1
Tobe’s bestest story of all
Tobe’s bestest story of all
It was my Granpada what told me stories first, back when I was pink as a Lily like you, all them years back, an’ just like him, I’m tellin’ you this story now so’s you can tell your nips one day. Granpada’s all tell stories, all ‘cross the Wold, and every Granpada has one that’s special and only gets told once and then. It’s his bestest story, and it takes some tellin’.
This is my bestest story of all. Others might tell it differently, but this be your old Grandpada Tobe’s way, an’ I ain’t heard no better, so that’s that.
Hush an’ listen now.
Fae doesn’t come when they not needed. Gargles neither. They got no choice. Is just is.
Them Jumkas makes the binders that keep all everything together, and them Fae and them Gargles just gets took where they got go. That’s how things work. There and back. Back and there. All through the whens what makes up the everything, wherever that might be, putting a shape on it — for better or for not. Without them, all yours would be grey and dowdy, and not worth a fug.
You get a bright thing in your head and a glow lights up your gurn? That’s Fae. Jumka brung you a nice one and it’ll stop there til the rebound, keeping you dandy.
Dark buggerness comes over you out o’ nowhere and no reason you can fathom? That’s Gargle. You caught bad luck and you’ll be suffering the other side of things for a bit.
No one knows what makes Jumka finds its way — no one this Pix knows, anyroad. Just chance, says some. I dunno. Poor Pix like I don’t get no say and no choice. No Jumka taking likes of Tobe nowhere, nowhen.
Sprites are all different, see? Fae and Gargle go out yonder ‘long the Jumka, touching Hooms as they pass, like sunbeams an’ spring showers I s’pose you’d say it. Others — Pix and Imp, and all them four-footers down the Glen — we stay in the Wold and bothers noone. Put here for some other thing what noone’s told us yet.
Jumka paths stretch out back from before everything, and on to somewhere off beyond, all mungly and multering a right old tangle, thick as bramble and knotted as oak. Not like twigs in a tree, mind. More like drips in a river. You know they in there but y’ain’t going pluck one out.
Fae and Gargle dunno where they goin’ end up neither, but off they goes— back and there — flitting where the Jumka takes and waiting for rebound brung ’em back. Plantin’ what they takes along the way and hopin’ not get snagged. Cos that happens too.
Course — like you’d ‘spect from how they is — Fae and Gargle don’t get along so well. Something ‘bout a thing what happened way back’s what I heard, so praps it’s something ‘bout Jumka. I dunno. Long gone and forgot by the rest of us, but that’s not how your Fae sees it. Gargles neither so. Good job they don’t bump up along the way so much. Not never if all works out, o’course, but things don’t always work out. Don’t need no Pix tell you that, does you?
That’s what makes this a story worth mentioning, and that story is what I’m going put here for you to see.
Maybe it’ll learn you something. Maybe it’ll ‘mind you keep your eye open for them sparks and lights in the corner of your eye, or them sun drops and lightning jolts, an’ make you wonder if it were Jumka what touched you. For better or ill.
Chapter 1 — Trinny
It had been light for hours. The birds had long since switched from the urgent chattering cacophony of dawn to their usual everyday jabber as they scrabbled around for things to eat or advertised their eligibility for sex. Whatever it all meant it was too loud, and Trinny didn’t care about any of it.
Her back ached.
The heavy thrumming of wings drew close a few times, sending pulses of tension through her already uncomfortable shoulders, but there was no sign of anything other than insects settling on the window ledge. They would flit away sooner or later.
It had been too warm for coverings in the night. She lay on her face in the hope it would help with the discomfort but now her neck was stiff and everything hurt when she swung herself to the edge of the bed. Anyone arriving on the veranda would be able to see her sitting there naked, but she didn’t care. Unless it was her mother.
Trinny pulled the pale blue tunic from the floor and turned it over and over between her hands trying to get it the right way around for her arms to slip into. It was enough to cover her for now, so long as she didn’t bend over or anything. Fuck it.
The little bowl that gathered dew and rainwater over near the window was not looking too fresh but there was nothing else, so she stooped to take a sip, wincing at the musty taste of it. It didn’t so much clear the dry rancid coating from her mouth as replace it with something slightly less claggy, but it would do. A piece of fruit would help but there was nothing here. She was supposed to get some yesterday but hadn’t in the urgent excitement of preparation.
She went to the doorway. A couple of moths that had settled on the veranda startled and looped away together into the trees. Nobody else was around. Trinny stood at the edge and looked down. The little two-room she lived in perched just below the canopy where the tree branches were thickest. There were no other dwellings close by. Far below, she could see the stream — not much of a thing at this time of year with the meltwater gone — surrounded by flat grey rocks and patches of fern pushing out from the fringes of the tree line. It was peaceful. There would be nobody to see. It would be over in a moment from this height. She’d feel the familiar breeze rush past her face and the backdrop of forest greens that had been her home when she was younger. The babble of cold freshwater would be the final sound she would hear and then the pain would be gone. It would be so easy.
Her mother wouldn’t be the first to find her. That would be the only regret. It’s what she deserved — to find the shattered body of her daughter, down there beside the stream beneath the shadow of the forest for all to see. That would be a fitting end to this, but Trinny knew it wouldn’t work out. The children would more likely be the ones to discover her body as they came down to the water, and that would not be fair on them.
Did fair matter? Did anyone care whether the things that happened to her were fair? She could remember the bitterness of her mother’s disdain the day of the Choosing when everyone else had been so excited to find out their destiny, but Trinny had cried when she found out hers. Nobody cared then and look what happened. Nobody cared that her back hurt so much or why. She couldn’t tell them that, and thinking about it just brought more pain.
Trinny stepped out from the veranda into the empty air above the forest and even though it hurt, she began to beat her wings.
“Trinidad? “ the voice calling through the trees didn’t echo, it hung, cutting effortlessly in the forest. “Trinidad.”
Two Fawn that had stood peacefully beside the stream for a long time hurriedly took quick sips of cool water and sprang back into the undergrowth, not wanting to fall under the gaze of an Elder. Trinny lay on her side absorbing warmth from the sun-blanched rock, idly trailing a long stem of grass in the little pool that had formed where the stream elbowed around a corner before skipping down through the rapids towards the Plains of Hough below the forest. She heard her mother approaching but made no effort to move.
“Didn’t you hear me calling you?” Biisk appeared on the opposite side of the pool. She stood there as if the trees had grown up around her and the ferns that draped along the bank of the stream had been placed there for no other reason than to frame her in shades of green. Her gown was pale — something between the grey of mist at dawn and the silver of birch bark — just a shade darker than the color of her hair, which hung straight and even across her shoulders, and her wings stood proud and strong without a blemish as if she’d been preening for a week.
Trinny didn’t need to look at her mother to discover any of this.
“Should you be at home if you’re not feeling well?”
“Where people can’t see me, you mean?”
“Where you can be looked after, Trinidad. Where I can find you without needing to search the forest, worried what might have happened.”
“Oh, so for your convenience?” Trinny pushed herself up stiffly, trying not to show any sign of the pain that jarred down her spine, made worse by the effort of flying down to the glen earlier that day. It would have been good to spend the remainder of the afternoon without having those judgemental eyes looking her over and putting her in her place. “Did you worry that I might have done something stupid?” Standing she was nowhere near as tall as her mother, even if she had drawn herself fully upright — something she never really managed to do, and had been told about more times than she needed to recall. “I will remember to stay where you can find me in future. Thank you for your concern. Now you can go, and let me go hide back in my two-room until you need to see me again.”
Biisk shook her head and thought all of the things Trinny knew she thought about her daughter. “You’re being silly again,” she said. “Everyone wants to see you back to your old self. Nobody more than me. Trinidad, I just don’t know what I’m supposed to say to you that’s going to make you realize…”
“Don’t say anything then, “ Trinny shot back. “Go back and choose somebody else and just leave me here where I’m not embarrassing you with my problems.” She would have liked to make a dramatic exit at this point but she knew she wouldn’t make it all the way up to her home in the canopy without resting at least twice, and the thought of her mother seeing her like that was too humiliating to even try.
“Fine,” Biisk clasped her hands in front of her chest. Her knuckles were paler than usual. “I can see you’re still upset, and there’s just no talking to you when you’re in this state.”
The impulse to respond angrily rose in Trinny’s heart, but by the time she’d turned to face her mother, the Elder Fae had gone, leaving no sign of her presence beside the gentle sway of the fern left in her wake.
She stood on the rock beside the pool in silence for a while looking at her silhouette reflected in the water, an empty black space surrounded by early summer skies and the vibrant myriad of green from the forest. Her shape looked wrong. It was ugly. It bent in the wrong way for Fae. They were all grace and beauty. She was none of it.
The Fawn edged out from the trees again and returned to the patch of grass close by where the sun was beginning to spread.
“Sure,” Trinny flopped her arms dismissively. “Come on back now my mother’s gone.”
“She’s a lot nicer when you’re not around,” the buck said absently.
Trinny glared at him then leaped into the air.
“You didn’t have to say that, Sakai,” the doe Fawn said in a whisper.
The buck shrugged his shoulders. “Well, she is.”
Part 2 of Dark Places will appear here in one week’s time. Why not Subscribe to get it direct to your inbox?
Merton Barracks lives in a state of bewildered enlightenment as he gradually unpacks the contents of his subconscious baggage.
Don’t expect to find a predictable or obvious genre in his fiction. It goes where it goes and says what it says, but the real story will often be hidden behind the words and between the lines.
Often published at The Lark, but sometimes just at home. Come take a look and see where it brings you.
